THE GIRL WITH THE VINE TATTOO

There is something intrinsic in our community that draws us (and our tattooed likenesses) into the science fiction and fantasy realm. When the first part of Hunger Games: Mockingjay came out, women in the scene lamented that Halloween had passed as Cressida (Natalie Dormer), with her near-half-shaved head and vine tattoos, would have been a better costume than Miley and her wrecking ball. Now, with Part 2 on its way this November and a reminder to our female readers to break out the clippers this October, here is a chat with the head makeup artist who created the newly iconic look, Ve Neill.

Ve Neill: “In the books it says she has vines that wrap around her head all the way down her arm. I went online to see what vine tattoos have been done because I did not want to replicate what had been done . I kind of Frankensteined some samples together, I took leaves off one thing, vines off another. I did try different vines, but the stronger ones didn’t look as pretty on her. I did want it to be beautiful because she is from The Capitol and the whole idea is that those people are more gentrified and exotic-looking, so I didn’t want to put anything on her that would be too masculine. Then I took it to Glenn Hetrick (of Face Off) who produced the tattoos for me, he has a lot of tattoos and he is adept at working with them so it worked out really well for us. He figured out how they would flow on a friend of his who already had her head shaved before we put them on Natalie. And Natalie loved the tattoo. She had to have loved it—she had to shave her thick hair for them.”